


we might be hollow but we're brave

by dcnwilds



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, starts Sad but has a hopeful ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 23:43:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15327021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dcnwilds/pseuds/dcnwilds
Summary: Neil dreams of the night he became Nathaniel - of dashboard lighters and still stinging wounds and Lola’s face inches from his own and a cleaver drawing crimson.





	we might be hollow but we're brave

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a prompt on tumblr (my url's reneeandallison #selfpromo) for andreil hurt/comfort or angst with a happy ending! The song kind of referenced that plays on the radio is Sober II (Melodrama) by Lorde in case anyone wants to know lol and uh maybe leave kudos or comment if you like this? <333

Neil dreams of the night he became Nathaniel - of dashboard lighters and still stinging wounds and Lola’s face inches from his own and a cleaver drawing crimson. He tastes his own blood, as bitter as his defeat, and feels pain that should have become a ghost, and watches the glint of a knife in the headlights of a passing car. All he knows is that his body is a canvas and his father wields the war paint that will bury him.

He runs, in a basement that has broken too many bones and spirits before his, a dead man walking’s final attempt to flee the gallows before the noose can claim him, but he doesn’t get far before Nathan’s fists are upon him and the floor can envelop him.

And now is when shots should ring and the butcher should fall and a mobster masquerading as something like family should make his grand entrance. Reality should set in, that for the first time in nineteen years Nathaniel can be more than the boy who learnt to lie rather than love, and run but never stay. But this is not reality, it is something worse - what almost was.

Nathaniel is disassembled inch by inch, flesh mutilated at the hands of his own flesh. His feet and then his ankles and then his legs are stripped of the skin that bound them, muscles and flesh scraped away as if they never held up any human. He tries to crawl away but his arms are taken, and he tries to scream, but his tongue is taken, until at last his life is taken, as Nathaniel Wesninski drifts away into the night.

But then Neil Josten awakes in a very different kind of darkness, made warmer and softer by the presence of Andrew to his left, and King Fluffkins and Sir Fat Cat McCatterson to his right. Hands and heart trembling, Neil reminds himself of seeing Nathan and Lola die, of the day he received the legislation that allowed him to say goodbye to Nathaniel, of making court and wedding rings and the foxes at his graduation and Andrew telling him to stay.

Andrew, who he notices now is watching him, eyes narrowed just enough to be visible in the dim light. Neil realises his forehead is damp with sweat and his breaths are coming in short gasps, and knows that Andrew has already registered these warning signs. They are used to waking to the soundtrack of the other’s heavy breathing and racing heartbeat (and causing those symptoms, for a very different reason), but on this night they can feel in the air that stifles them that something is different. 

(In the kitchen, on a calendar decorated with cats that Andrew refuses to touch, a shaky circle scrawled around today’s date. When the sun rises, they will stumble in, all messy hair and sleepy gazes and long yawns, sipping bittersweet coffees. The date will catch Neil’s attention from the corner of his eye, and a cold rush of realisation will fall upon him like the ice cold shower Kevin convinced him to take once for stamina. He will say a silent happy birthday to Nathaniel Wesninski. But that is yet to come.)

Andrew rises without a word, snatching his lighter and a packet of cigarettes from the table beside his side of the bed, then stalking out of the room. Neil follows, bleary eyed but accustomed to their routines. For Neil, it’s cigarettes. For Andrew, ice cream as well. But to his surprise, he doesn’t find Andrew sitting on the fire escape when he shuts their bedroom door behind him, but waiting at the door, keys in hand.

Neil blinks, momentarily jolted, but slips on his most comfortable shoes and follows Andrew down two flights of stairs then into the car. The time on the dashboard reads 3:07 and the midnight streets are empty as Andrew drives without destination. Neil feels his heart rate steady and breathing even, as a voice he doesn’t recognise sings quietly on the radio about lovers kissing and killing each other.

He lights a cigarette with almost still hands, murmuring curses when at first the lighter fails him. It might have been seventeen years since he sat in a small town stadium and remembered the night his mother died, but his name remains the same, and so does the small comfort the smell of smoke is able to bring him.

They continue in silence, seconds and minutes pass by unchecked as Neil occasionally brings the cigarette to Andrew’s lips to allow the blond to take a long drag. After ten or thirty or sixty minutes Andrew speaks, another change from their growing rituals of not talking because they both know there’s nothing left to say. Tonight, though, watching distant city lights from the passenger seat, Neil is glad for it.

“Your parents are dead, you are not fine, and nothing is going to be okay.” Andrew says, as Neil almost flinches at the words from so long ago. “But you are still Neil Josten. You are still alive.”

To anyone else, the words would sound similar to cruel and merciless taunts of a sociopath. But Neil isn’t anyone else, and he understands Andrew perfectly.

He will never be able to completely escape his past, the years of running and looking over his shoulder and lies that came more naturally than truths, the weeks he spent in the Nest, his father’s cleaver on his throat that night in Baltimore. These ghosts will follow him to his grave. He will never be able to fit the perception of okay the majority of his Foxes would define it as, but he doesn’t need to, he can create his own.

The name on his passport reads Neil Josten. He hasn’t moved apartments in five years. Everyday he wakes up and drinks coffee and trains and feeds the cats and runs and kisses Andrew. At eighteen, Neil had thought joining the Palmetto State Foxes would be his damnation, as it so nearly had been, but at thirty-five he is able to worship it as his salvation.


End file.
